Need I remind you of sunsets?

Of burned emulsion on my hand from too many chemicals?

Of red raw beauty?

It exists - I've seen it.

Flowered alone with it while watching the glazed look that your eyes get

when you think that no one's noticing you.

I'm not looking for you; but I don't mind

hanging around until I realize that theirs so much better out there for me.

I don't mind age

(I've kissed younger, same, and older)

and all three have kissed me back with the triangle twist of youth

(well preserved infancy that hangs around through old age)

I've seen it apart from your face -

felt it in my giggle when I was truly childish, and uninhibited.

When I ran around without a care in baggy jeans

and hemlines without seams.

Bittersweet mysteries that floundered and flowered me.

Need I remind you of myself?

Girl who changes like the patterns in the rain

as it falls on your slightly disjointed cheek bones -

bones that I kissed,

and traced,

and laced,

and faced

head on

without a single fear in my heart.

Grudges that I wore like jewelry

(fine incrusted diamonds well worth their weight in pardons.)

Finely tended gardens of undertowed prejudice -

malice was a facemask that I used to cleanse my pours.

Silence was a weapon that stunned.

Need I remind you of it?

I hid between the verses of my poetry,

stacked high and given to you in the hopes that you would figure out the

clues that I left behind.

How I hid the names of the boys I loved in tittles and structure -

I made a game of it -

a life out of it -

a way to keep me above the water that would have drowned me.

Need I remind you of cowardice?

Of you with nothing left to say?

Of me

(always)

with far too much?

All I wanted was words from you -

clean sentences and

poetry pealed from your tongue like the chaotic screams from your orgasm.

I've always only ever wanted words!

Written proof of all that injustice.

Written pathways ahead of the lucid chemicals of those days -

you and me,

we grew like asbestos up the walls.

Corner covered distillation.

We grew inside the cracks of each other until the damage

was so bad that we just started over

(apart.)